Youth Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an interdisciplinary effort to position and describe the contested nature of state and ethnic identity among youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina by providing empirical, first-hand evidence on identity structure and the subsequent implications for inter-group relations.

In Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Keith Doubt and Adnan Tufekčić analyze Bosnian social organization, cultural character, and boundary maintenance. Doubt and Tufekčić argue that modern Bosnians live in a polyethnic society, defined by a set of marriage and kinship practices that cross ethnic and national identity divisions. This book provides readers with a clearer understanding of Bosnian identity and the role of ethnic groups in an increasingly complex society.

This book examines the identities of young adults in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. With research drawn from a large multidisciplinary project exploring a potential for reconciliation in post-conflict societies, the authors discuss the interplay between ethnic, religious and national identities that have been the source of recent violent conflicts. They focus on people aged 18-30, representing generations that are socialized after the wars, but live in ethnically divided societies burdened with a difficult history. Another aim of the project was to compare majority and minority perspectives within each country, and to provide a unique view on how to reinterpret and build more inclusive social identities. Scholars and organizations interested in areas of social psychology, political science and sociology will find this research of great value.

What shapes the cultural, political and ideological values of young people living in Southeastern Europe? Which identities matter to them? How are their values changing, and how can they be changed? Who is changing them? Europe’s periphery is the testing ground for the success of European values and identities. The future stability and political coherence of the Union will be determined in large measure by identity issues in this region. This book examines the ways in which ethnic and national values and identities have been surpassed as the overriding focus in the lives of the region’s youth. Employing bottom-up, ethnographic, and interview-based approaches, it explores when and where ethnic and national identification processes become salient. Using intra-national and international comparisons of youth populations of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, contributors uncover the mechanisms by which ethnic identities are evoked, reproduced and challenged. In addition to exploring political, regional cultural generational and class identities, the contributors examine wider questions of European unity. This volume offers a corrective to previous thinking about youth ethnic identities and will prove useful to scholars in political science and sociology studying issues of ethnic and national identities and nationalism, as well as youth cultures and identities.

This book examines the salience and role of ethno-national identities of young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina fifteen years after the end of the Bosnian War. The underlying argument is that ethno-national identities and boundaries in Bosnia are not constituted and maintained through intensive social contact as constructivists such as Fredrik Barth and Thomas Eriksen have argued, but rather through a lack of it. The author shows that cross-ethnic contact is a critical mechanism that helps, rather than hinders, the building of multiple and complimentary identities. She proposes that contrary to the constructivist arguments, the actual content of identities such as descent and religion matter for the intensity and malleability of identities. The fieldwork material demonstrates that identities can become multilayered in situations where the «other» is personalized and experienced.

Stolac, the town of departure for this book and the site where the author conducted fieldwork, is located in the south-western corner of Bosnia Herzegovina. The war in Bosnia Herzegovina (1992-95) was initially an act of aggression and territorial conquest instigated by Serbian political leaders. However, as the war progressed, it increasingly came to consist of several minor wars, one of them fought in Western Bosnia Herzegovina between Croatian and Muslim forces. This was the one that affected the inhabitants of Stolac the most. Before the war, ethnic identity in Bosnia Herzegovina was only one identity among others, and ethnic differences were embedded in everyday practices. Today, ethnic difference is all there is. The Muslims of Stolac are fully aware that as Muslims, they constitute a totally separate group - and that ethnic identity is by far the most important form of identity in present-day Bosnia Herzegovina. In that regard the nationalist project has succeeded. Such a crystallisation and explication of identity fits in well with the structurally inspired anthropology of war and violence, which theorises that the function of violence is to create unambiguous identities. However, Post-War Identities shows that for the Muslims of Stolac, the creation of unambiguous ethnic identities is only half the story.

In the wake of devastating conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the polarizing effects of everyday ethnic divisions, combined with hardened allegiances to ethnic nationalism and the rigid arrangements imposed in international peace-building agreements, have produced what Azra Hromadžić calls an "empty nation." Hromadžić explores the void created by unresolved tensions between mandated reunification initiatives and the segregation institutionalized by power-sharing democracy, and how these conditions are experienced by youths who have come of age in postconflict Bosnia-Herzegovina. Building on long-term ethnographic research at the first integrated school of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Citizens of an Empty Nation offers a ground-level view of how the processes of reunification play out at the Mostar Gymnasium. Hromadžić details the local effects of the tensions and contradictions inherent in the processes of postwar state-making, shedding light on the larger projects of humanitarian intervention, social cohesion, cross-ethnic negotiations, and citizenship. In this careful ethnography, the Mostar Gymnasium becomes a powerful symbol for the state's simultaneous segregation and integration as the school's shared halls, bathrooms, and computer labs foster dynamic spaces for a rich cross-ethnic citizenship—or else remain empty.